Google+ Offers Content Recommendations For Mobile Sites, As Social Explodes Over the Web

Site visitors could always do with a little more content, right? But even if your site has lots of great articles, getting links to the right kind of stories can be problematic. So, Google will now feed appropriate content using recommendations from its social media service for mobile users.

Providing Content on the Go

Google+, as part of the Googleverse, is pushing interactivity for users far beyond just being in the Google+ app or on the website. Instead, Google is pushing the service as content on the move, both as you travel with your smartphone and following you from page to page. With that degree of integration, the power of the Google+ sign-in, as opposed to a local log-in or using a rival service, offers more relevant content.

Forbes is one of the initial sign-in partners, use that site on your mobile (iOS or Android for now) and you can tap the Google+ logo at the bottom to find more articles that might interest you, expand this to the more specific sites you read on a daily basis and you could find Google+ providing you with a lot more reading as your browse.

The recommendations come from search authorship signals and popular articles viewed by Google+ users, all linked to the content of the page you started out on. If you don't like the idea of further reading, just don't tap the G+ option. There are some 50+ launch partners for this initiative, and expect smaller sites to be able to join in soon. And, of course, there's those little '+' boxes so you can like stories too, which all helps to add to that inter-connected social space that Google so loves.

Soon, it'll be hard to tell where your social network starts and ends as these services monitor your every step across the web, mobile or otherwise, and tailor themselves to provide the best content, but just how much are you giving to them in return? They are not just in this for your benefit, but to profit from information they can use about you.

There have been many mini, and some quite large, social media rebellions over the years, getting sites to backtrack on policy and so on. But, we wonder just how far away the first mega-uproar one is. One where user power (not hacking or other means) will bring a site down, suggesting that users really can get mad as hell and won't take it any more.